


Meenahquest

by pensiveFabulist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Black Romance, F/F, F/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Red Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensiveFabulist/pseuds/pensiveFabulist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The immortal Alternian Empire owes its greatness, in part, to two rulers. The first, an immoral and genocidal warlord, who nevertheless expanded the Empire's breadth with blood and iron to the very corners of the planet. The second, an immoral and genocidal warlord in the making, who, after being forced to abdicate and flee for her life, would instead find herself, a mutant, and a peasant the sole hope for her race's survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meenahquest

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary: "The Dictator" as a tragic fantasy epic with aliens.

A purple dot, glancing off the clouds as it rises, and the sky is amethyst in the sunset. Her eyes are heavy with sopor, her heart with anticipation, her body with the unwanted hang of the dress, and she pines a little for the lightness of the moon.

There’s a call from inside the tower, and a handmaid cautiously trespasses on her reverie, tiptoeing into the dusk. “Your highness, you ought to return now, if it pleases you. The delegation is set to arrive before night comes.” The girl’s face to the tips of high-reaching ears are flushed a dull turquoise, and as much as she can’t stand the request, it’s beyond her to yell at the tealblood. She sweeps by the girl without a word, into the hazy light of her tower room.

Within, more attendants await her, limes and teals and one cerulean, their hues a gentle smudge on the background in comparison with the majesty of her fuchsia. It’s disconcerting, as always, as they set about their work, hands prying and braiding and twisting and tying all over to make sure she’s ready for tonight’s court. It takes five of together to manage the writhing mane that is her hair: one to comb it out, and two each to attend on the braids that will coil down her back, riddled with gold and trinkets that she insists upon. The considerable amount of wealth displayed in her hair is the Empresses’ concession to her disgust at the whole affair, the only reason she hasn’t cut most of it off by now. Even now, her attendants work to disguise the uneven black chunks which resulted from her last attempt at rebellion. A princess ought to have long hair. Or so they tell her.

When the last gold chain has been braided and the final bead strung, she is presented to the mirror one last time, a vision in tyrian and black, hair glistening with drops of gold and her forehead framed by the sweeping wings of the Empirical tiara. They have shined and scrubbed her into their idea of a princess as best they could, and she glows with it, all of her but her eyes. These remain cold and predatory in a way that no amount of grubpaint can cover, and she can’t help but to draw vengeful satisfaction from seeing this one part untouched in her reflection.

A greenblooded seamstress goes in with a pin to adjust a sleeve on her gown, drawing blood with clumsy hands, and Meenah draws back violently, knocking the woman’s talons aside. “It’s perfect! Your work here is done, keep your claws to yourself!” She looks around at the rest of her posse, all stock still and waiting, and gestures to herself in frustration. “Feast your eyes! I’m departing, so you can all consider your task done!”

She’s not expecting a response, and is unsurprised when she doesn’t receive one as she brushes through the flock of attendants in unbreakable stride towards the ornamental door that leads from her chambers down to the palace’s court. She can imagine how proud they must be when she only trips on her gown once.

□

            Humming and packed with swirling crowds of chatty trolls, the palace’s great hall is possessed with an air of fervour and pretention that is entirely inescapable for all within. Tonight, the haemospectrum is out in full force, each individual in fanatical dedication to press up a little higher on the ladder: indigos augmenting their grubpaint with rust so as to appear purple; purples blue in the face from the effort of constantly extending their tiny fin remnants to masquerade as violet; violets laden with gems and cloth of their colour, inching towards, but never trespassing on, the last and greatest glory of blood. As she steps out of the doorway onto the balustrade, the glory is all hers.

                Immediately, the room is swept by silence, and courtiers fall to one knee in a wave that ripples from the wide mouth of the staircase, towards the rose-threaded slabs of deep-sea coral which compose the doorway in the far end of the hall. Seeing the hundred-some sets of horns tipped away from her in a display of reverential non-aggression, she cannot but taste bile at the weakness of those who call themselves her subjects, and hurriedly beckons them to rise, swallowing the black taste now rising in her throat. One such subject, coming to stand near her elbow, leans towards her to whisper in her aural ridges.

                “Looking excellent tonight, your highness.” She spins, her gown flaring, and comes to stare at the scarred and leering face of the speaker.

                “Out of my way, Cronus.” His face falls into a darker shape.

                “No need to be so harsh, your highness.” She attempts to step past him, but he jumps ahead, keeping pace with her, and continues, “after all, neither her Imperial Majesty nor the ambassador have graced us with their presence. Until then, who else at tonight’s lovely gala can provide the sort of entertainment fit for a princess?” A strange, lilting accent cuts through his words, chopping in some places and smoothing in others.

                Moving down the stairway as fast as her gown will allow, she shoots a quick glance at the raised dais that lies at the base of the stairs. There lie two thrones, both empty, each carved from the same ancient coral as the doors of the great hall, positioned to view of the entirety of the room. Nearing these, she remarks to Cronus, “Sorry, but I haven’t got the time. Court somebody who cares.”

                She stops when she feels the rapier press into her side, just below her gills.

                Around them, court continues its manic whirl, but the two of them freeze stiff, just feet from her throne. From beneath his silk-sheathed arm protrudes a few inches of the best Alternian steel, sharp enough to cut mail, strong enough to be bent in half without breaking, the tip nestled neatly in the folds at her waist. Sensing just enough restraint, she twists to face him. Cronus’s expression is black but his face glows violet, and his voice is deeply unpleasant when he speaks.

                “Ever since we were little, you’ve afforded me nothing like the respect I deserve, _Meenah_ ,” he spits, far overstepping his place when he uses her name in place of her title. “For years and years and years now, you’ve been so concerned with lamenting your position that you neglect those of us who might support you in it. I can only hope that you understand that I am the closest thing you will ever find to a suitor the haemospectrum deems worthy of you, and that it is unwise to offend an individual with my power and connections.”

                She casts her eyes to the towards her throne, sizing up her distance from the culling fork which sits propped neatly against the back of the seat. But even beneath the thick folds of her gown, he sees her tense, and increases the pressure until she can feel the blade dig into her skin properly. “Are you even listening to me, Princess?” She spits in his face.

                Within the next instant, three things occur at once, in such quick succession that even hindsight renders them nigh indistinguishable. The first occurs as a great sound resounds from the far end of the hall, an ancient, booming noise, as the magnificent doors are thrown open to the night. The second, as the room spins to face the noise, Meenah leaps on her chance, seizing the trident and hooking it around Cronus’s throat to pin him to the throne. The third, as down from the top of the stairs, into the din, the Empress herself descends, and strikes the whole room to silence.

                 While her descendantwears the veneer with disdain, the Empress glows with it till it sinks beneath her skin; blood hides her age better than grubpaint ever could, and youth permeates everything, her eyes, her gestures, her heartwarming, bloodcurdling smile. Behind her trails the black cloud of her mane, flowing and falling across the stairs, unkempt and shining in the candlelight of the great hall. At her appearance, the court has sunk once again to its knees, and when Meenah hesitates, her ancestor meets her eyes, and she breaks, trident falling to her side as she falls into submission. Her pride aches as Cronus gasps for breath and falls by her side. Satisfied, her ancestress sweeps her arms wide, preparing to address her subjects.

                “I am so pleased to see you all here!” The voice is bright and resonant, and revoltingly saccharine to Meenah’s ear. “It makes me so happy to be able to greet my subjects with what should be most agreeable news: today, we welcome into our midst visitors from a distant land, in hopes that they might become our friends and allies!” And, lifting a gold-dipped hand, she once again directs the attention of the court to the pair of figures who stand dwarfed by the great doors in the hall entrance. On either side, the guards responsible for granting entrance to visitors stand dumbstruck, the opening mechanisms for either side entirely untouched.

                The court is silent as the more diminutive of these two steps forward from the shadow of the doorway, revealing a figure wrapped in the subtle folds of a dark travelling cloak, hood pulled to conceal a face. Slowly, the shroud is lowered, revealing the smooth contours of a white helmet with no horn holes, rounded and polished to gleaming. The foreign knight bows to the Empress. Beaming, she gestures to Meenah and Cronus to move, sweeping past the pair of them to take her seat upon the throne of the Alternian Empire.

                When Meenah has taken her place at the Empress’ side and Cronus is back among the courtiers, the pair of foreigners are summoned to the foot of the platform to be properly received. As the taller of the two kneels at her feet, Meenah feels something nostalgic rising in her, a vague hint teasing at something she can no longer recall. The hood of the cloak hangs in a bizarre shape around the stranger’s face, obscuring it completely, while simultaneously lending the head a lumpy and deformed appearance; when the figure bends to kiss her hand, she catches a flash of scarlet from beneath the cowl. Before she can demand to see the foreigner’s face, the Empress interrupts, initiating her official welcome before the witness of the court.

                “It is an Alternian custom for guests to declare themselves before royalty, in order to be recognized before the Empire. Will you do so?”

                The pale knight nods, and lifts himself from obeisance. “I am known by a startling array of titles, your imperial majesty, but naturally one of these will suffice, even for an individual such as myself. Within my homeland I am most commonly referred to as the Duke of Scratch.” The voice which emanates from the helmet is all smoothness and velvet, and the already the Empress is smiling faintly; and yet Meenah cannot but feel the fins on her arms and back rise with vague anxiety. Nearby, the second cloaked stranger still kneels, silent and motionless.

                Dipping her head, the Empress extends a delicate palm, and replies in a musical voice, “Then I welcome you, Duke of Scratch, into the stronghold of our eternal Empire, in the hopes that we shall aid one another! Time has by now drawn my name from history’s annals and my own mind both; in its place, you might refer to me as the Incandesce, the second Empress and First Lady of Alternia, and the Flower which Does Not Wilt.” The duke accepts her hand, and, raising his visor, presses it to whatever lies beneath his helmet. As he does so, a very peculiar expression crosses the Empress’ face, a sort of wonder in combination with confusion, which then slowly descends into something which almost resembles fear. Hiding the expression beneath a practiced smile takes less than a second. But Meenah marks it, even as the Empress speaks again.

                “Tell us, Duke of Scratch, what purpose have you in our land?” And the duke chuckles softly to himself.

                “I come, your imperial majesty, on an errand for my master, who will arrive in your domain shortly; until then, it is his hope and mine that we might find accommodation at your hands. You inquire as to my purpose, and so I can say plainly and truthfully that at present, my purpose is simply to relay to you certain facts. You see, as an individual with access to a great deal of information, it has come to my attention that in a very short span of time, both your imperial majesty’s kingdom and life will come under serious threat. If things continue to progress as they do at present, well, then…” he shakes his head in a slow and unhurried fashion, “It is my fear, by which I mean certainty by way of knowledge, that this threat will prove fatal to your reign.”

                Immediately, ruckus blooms, and one of the blueblood guards at Empress’ side leaps toward the knight, spear in hand and intent clear. Within an instant, the second figure shifts beneath the cloak, and the guard jolts as he freezes mid-pounce, suspended comically in the air for an instant, before the stranger twitches again and the blueblood flies unceremoniously into the wall with a sickening crack. Silence sinks over the courtiers, and Meenah finds her gaze fixed upon the face of her ancestress, as she watches the youth stripped back to reveal the Empress’s bare bones, that steely core and almost maniacal fearlessness that is her birthright. The older troll’s ear fins are flared wide, and beneath the soft glow of gold on her hands, pallor spreads from a tightness of grip. In a mere moment, she has risen from her throne to tower above the stranger, mane blooming in all directions, face taut with indignation and rage.

                “It has been a great many sweeps since a guest has had the audacity to speak to me thus,” she remarks, her voice clipped, and her tone icy, as she gestures to the court. “You might at any point have requested a private audience, and yet you chose to disclose this warning before the whole of my court? Undermine me before my subjects at your own peril.” She strides forward to meet the duke, and Meenah rises, clutching her trident, burning with her ancestress’ indignation and blood-pride and an unfamiliar sense of kinship. In turn, the duke remains steadfast, white-armoured hands clasped casually behind his back. The cloaked figure shifts at the physical threat the Empress presents, seemingly moving into position to defend their companion.

                For a moment, it seems that strife is imminent; Meenah can feel her blood begin to boil with it, can hear the hum of instinct in her bones and the pounding of anticipation in her aural ridges. She yearns as she knows the Empress must to show them what it means to be tyrian, to pin them to the ground with the prongs of her culling fork and then twist to breaking if they will not submit. She is tensed to do exactly this when the Empress lets out a long breath through her nasal reservoirs and briefly closes her eyes. When they open, her pupils, no longer pulled to slits by bloodlust, are dark and wide in amber sockets. In a strained, but nevertheless controlled voice, she declares, “Had you stood here before the first of my office and not the second, the fate you would make your own would have been too terrible to be recounted. As it is, I have long since renounced the ways of my ancestress, and our society no longer condones or permits culling, not even for the insult you bring.” As she says this, Meenah cannot help but wrinkle her nose in distaste. The Empress narrows her eyes, then continues, “I will honour your request for accommodation, and tomorrow we may discuss in _quieter quarters_ the threat you hope to elucidate. Until then, you will retire to the rooms allocated to you. Guards!” She beckons those that remain on either side of her, gesturing lightly towards the stairwell. “See to it that they are housed in the highest hivestem on the southern turret.”

                And as the pair are led away by a particularly gruff indigo, Meenah is for a moment certain that the duke winks at her, despite the fact that his helmet hides his face.

                As the night goes on, court proceeds as it might have before, spinning along in a frenzy of things that she has no ability nor wish to understand, and her gown grows tighter and tighter and her hose rougher and rougher, and she now grows tired of silence. The Empress is kind enough, but kindness is never what she needs, and both smart with the strangeness of the relationship; no other caste will live to see descendants but theirs. The elder troll’s rule has never been to her tastes, but there’s no changing that now, no changing that until she is queen, a millennia from now. For now, she waits and knows that shortly she will grow tired of waiting.

During the meal at high-dark, she seeks out Cronus, aiming to finish what she started, but is instead met with apology.

“It was my doing, your highness.” He sighs heavily, running a hand through slicked black hair. “It is beginning to occur to me that you respond poorly to pleas for acknowledgement. It would be understandable for you to construe this as just that, but I plan on leaving just after dawn today; it’s time I started pursuing my music seriously, as a proper bard. As I need to take my leave to pack, I think this might be the best occasion to say farewell: have a good, long life, Meenah.” And as he kisses her hand, his mouth lingering far too long to be courteous, she feels herself moved ever so slightly; sad, she supposes, to see a life as long as hers depart from what she knows.

At dawn, when the last braid is undone, she banishes all attendants from her chamber, strips off her sheath, and steps into the paling moonlight which still trickles into her respite block; sunlight dyes it fuschia, and so it bleeds for her on the horizon while the wind slips by. When she finally sinks into the sopor, resignation and exhaustion push her into sleep far before the anesthetic has a chance.

□

                The sun hangs heavy in the sky, casting strange shadows as it pours into the highest hivestem on the southern turret. One figure illuminated, the other in darkness, and the shorter faces the light and speaks.

                “Thus, do I make my fools my purse.” Chuckling slightly, he clasps his hands lightly behind his back, and says wistfully, “My dear, I must admit I find your silence surprising. Or at least I would, should my omniscience not clearly elucidate the reason for it.” When the cloaked figure does not reply, he sighs. “Very well then. I know it is finished. Please, bring it here.”

                From the darkness, the other straightens, delicate grey-fingered hands clutching an oddly-shaped flask which hisses and spits from recent additions. The iridescent slurry within dances from colour to colour at a sickening pace, and appears at any second ready to eat through the container which holds it. Taking it, the white knight with an arc of sparks produces a stout glass from some unknown cavity, then, dissipating with a flash the cork, pours out a measure from one vessel to another. “A toast, to the shortness of immortality.”

                And, shedding his cloak, he once again he lifts his visor, revealing within not a head or face, but instead the back wall of an empty helmet. Into this disquieting gap, he delicately tips the mixture, which shines all the way down.

                For a moment, all is still.

                When it begins, it does so subtly, noiselessly, and the other figure shifts, uncertain; and then the change crosses the tipping point to become horrifyingly apparent. The armour begins to rustle and scrape against itself, pulling apart at the seams with a shrill screech, and beneath it something grows, bubbling and shifting to resolve itself into skin. Gauntlets tear first, and arms soon follow, veiny, deformed limbs bursting from an undersized torso, clawed and grasping. The legs come next, and the cloaked figure flinches as blood splatters from the stump to puddle messily on the floor and hang gem-like on the walls. With a sickening crunch, the breastplate crumples as the torso burst forth, viridian and heavily muscled, veiled an instant later as a long green cloak manifests itself, the edges rippling with dizzying shifts in colour.

                And then the buildup begins, as the final piece starts to show cracks; the helmet darkens as lines start to web across its surface, shredding the metal until at long last, with a deafening sound, it bursts.

                For a moment after the gaunt and abhorrent skull is revealed, neither moves, as the newly revealed demon struggles to stand on one leg while the other drips slowly onto the marble floor. Hurriedly, the cloaked figured grasps within the cloth folds of a bundle to their side, and momentarily produces an ornate length of gold, which the demon seizes and affixes to the bloody stump. Assembled, the monster opens a fanged and skeletal jaw and lets loose an unearthly noise, an indescribable abomination of sound which, in hindsight, could be related only as a declaration of intent.

                That day, Meenah awakes to the sound of her lusus screaming. 

**Author's Note:**

> One of the greatest issues this piece posed for me was characterization without swearing- never before had I realized the difficulty of conveying certain syntactical quirks without the aid of coarser language. As a result, please take this as my heartfelt apology if you feel certain characters are represented inaccurately by this piece; I do the best I can, and of course constructive criticism or input will be noted duly and thankfully.


End file.
